International

Journalist, trade unionist and LGBT+ rights campaigner Ali Feruz has been released from prison in Russia after a six-month campaign of solidarity. After helping to expose brutality against gay men in Chechnya, which was tolerated by the Russian government, Ali was arrested on bogus grounds and threatened with deportation to Uzbekistan, the country of his birth where he had already suffered horrific torture at the hands of the state for highlighting government corruption. Socialist Alternative in Russia and the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) – to which the Socialist Party is affiliated – helped organise international protests to demand Ali’s freedom. Finally, he has been released and he and his partner have been granted asylum in Germany.

After the horrific Parkland shooting that claimed the lives of 17 young people, high school students across the US are standing up to the arms industry and the politicians who do their bidding. Calls for gun reform, biting criticism of politicians in the pocket of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and planned school walkouts are proof that the new generation is sick of the torrent of mass shootings seen in recent years, and the blatant corruption of US politicians. Mass shootings like this are only the tip of the iceberg of America’s extremely high violent crime rates.

When the twenty first century dawned young women in the US and much of Europe were being told that equality was within their grasp. They didn’t need feminism because capitalism was offering a glittering future based on growing prosperity and gender equality. Today that illusion lies in ruins.

In January 2010 when the earthquake struck we wrote: “The humanitarian catastrophe that has befallen Haiti beggars belief.” Hundreds of thousands were killed and millions left homeless, injured, denied medicine and starving. The country had just two fire stations and no ‘quake-proof’ housing. Even before the earthquake 80% lived below the poverty line and three-quarters were out of work. Haitians were therefore extremely vulnerable. Our headline read, “a disaster compounded by capitalism”.

When Donald Trump made the announcement that the US was recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he did so in full knowledge that it would enrage Palestinians, with strike action and major protests taking place in Gaza, the West Bank and within the Israeli state. This anger has been […]